System and process for identifying objects and/or points nearby a given object or point

Abstract

A system and process is presented that identifies nearby objects and / or points in relation to a base object or point. An object or point is nearby if it resides within a prescribed area around the base point. The identification is based on information accessed from a database of geometric data. The identification of nearby neighbors begins by dividing the geographic system defined by said geometric data into a plurality of zones. The zone in which each object or point resides and the zones intersected by the prescribed area are determined. The nearby objects and / or points of interest are then identified by initially considering only those that are identified as residing in the zones intersected by the prescribed area. The search for nearby neighbors can be further refined by limiting the objects and / or points considered to those with locations within the lateral extent and / or within the height of the prescribed area.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation of a prior application entitled “A SYSTEM AND PROCESS FOR IDENTIFYING OBJECTS AND / OR POINTS NEARBY A GIVEN OBJECT OR POINT” which was assigned Ser. No. 10 / 354,200 and filed Jan. 28, 2003.BACKGROUND [0002] 1. Technical Field [0003] The invention is related to systems and processes for identifying objects and / or points nearby a given object or point based on information accessed from a database of geometric data. [0004] 2. Background Art [0005] There are in existence today large electronic databases containing information on objects associated with geometric systems. A very simple example of this is an electronic road map database. This type of database will typically contain information about the location of roads, towns and cities, and numerous other landmarks laid out in a planar geometry. In addition, the database will typically contain information about the landmarks found on the map. There are nume...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is a system and process for identifying nearby objects or points of interest in relation to a user-specified base point. The identification is based on geometric data that includes the location of objects or points in a geographic system. The system divides the geographic system into zones and assigns a zone number to each zone. The system then identifies the neighbors of the base point by determining the coordinate ranges of the objects or points in relation to the base point. The system can also limit the number of objects or points considered for further processing based on their distance from the base point. The technical effect of the invention is to provide a system for identifying nearby objects or points of interest quickly and efficiently.

Problems solved by technology

Computing the neighbors table using the fGetNearbyObjectsXyz( ) function can take a long time: on the fifteen million object SDSS early data release, the computation took 56 hours—or about 74 objects per second.

The basic problem is that SQL can evaluate equation (2) at the rate of about 170,000 records per second (5.6 μs per row), while the HTM functions run at about 170 records per second (5.9 ms per row to return the nearest object.)

The high costs of the HTM functions is a combination of the HTM procedures, the expensive linkage to SQL via external stored procedures (a string interface), and the use of table-valued functions.

It is noted, however, that the foregoing computation is parallel and inherently CPU-bound.

While this solution is viable, it is not very efficient in that it requires the use of multiple processors and does nothing to reduce the overall processing costs.

This will result in decreased processing time and faster results.

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